


This Will Have Been Enough

by TrivialPursuit



Series: Triviaglass Avengers 'Verse [9]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-15
Updated: 2013-09-15
Packaged: 2017-12-26 14:36:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/967099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrivialPursuit/pseuds/TrivialPursuit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natalia Alianovna Romanova and Dr Robert Bruce Banner die on a winter's day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Will Have Been Enough

 

  
Natalia Alianovna Romanova and Dr Robert Bruce Banner die on a winter's day. 

  
They have lived good, long lives, loved and been loved, watched as their son grew up . They have very few regrets. Their son, Roman, is at home with his friends, awaiting his parents return to celebrate their anniversary. 

He goes down first, the Hulk crippled by a stray missile to the back if his neck, and she soon follows, her leg bones shattering as a massive steel girder crushes her to the ground and releasing blood at an alarming rate. The others aren't fairing too much better, Iron Man is barely holding his own, Thor is away on Asgard dealing with a resurgence of the Jötun, and Hawkeye and the Captain have long been taken out of commission.

  
The Hulk pulls himself with his last remaining strength over to his wife, cradling her body in his good arm like a baby. She reaches out to stroke his cheek, and a single tear escapes from an eye. 

  
'Stark?'

  
'Kinda busy here, can it wait?' Comes the vaguely flippant response. 

  
'Tell my Roma I love him every night before he goes to sleep. If you pull back now the bomb will detonate and everyone in the facility will be eliminated. Go.' It takes the Man of Iron a moment to register what she's saying.

  
'There's-'

  
'Go.' The finality in her voice brooks no argument and so Iron Man picks up Captain America and Hawkeye and, with one last somber salut, flies away, leaving Bruce and Natasha to enemy agents and a nuclear bomb that is slowly counting down. 

  
'This wasn't how it was supposed to end,' she tells him. 'I love you.'

  
' _Ya tozhe tebya lyublyu._ ' He grunts, and she goes limp as his body shrinks then they explode into billions of atoms, scattering and mixing across the world. ( _He'd like that_ , they think,  _they both would._ )

  
They are given two funerals, or more precisely, a funeral and a memorial. Their gravestone is near their best guess of where her parents are buried in Volgograd. The one in Volgograd, which is really only a stone and a coffin filled with bouquets of bleeding hearts, the one they wanted, a quiet affair, only the few who were invited and the even fewer who took it upon themselves to find out when the funeral was to pay their last respects to the Incredible Hulk and the Black Widow (There's a tall blonde woman four rows back and a scientific-looking man lingering by a monument to the soldiers who dies in the Civil War, along with sundry other slightly dubious persons with varying criminal and espionage affiliations who scatter themselves among the peppering of headstones throughout the frosty field, watching alertly as the casket is lowered into the ground. They will bring no trouble, not today.), the priest who married them brought out of retirement to perform the last rites, the one in New York is the one for the people, one to let them know that two heroes have died. Every night, no matter what, until Tony Stark dies he tells Roman Bryusovitch Banner that his mother loved him.

  
There are two plates of metal on Iron Man's left arm that have been painted a glossy black despite the hot rod red of the surrounding suit. Captain America wears a mourning band into battle for nigh on a decade after the deaths of his comrades (' _Natasha hated that word._ ' someone would say whenever they used it, and yet they use it anyway) until he too retires and his son takes his place. A year after the deaths of Bruce Banner and Natasha Romanoff, a new pair take up the torch, charging into battle in place of the fallen.

Natalia Alianovna Romanova and Dr Robert Bruce Banner die on a winter's day. 

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from A Softer World


End file.
